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Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels The Wrong End of the Telescope; The Angel of History; An Unnecessary Woman; The Hakawati; I, the Divine; Koolaids: The Art of War; the story collection, The Perv; and one work of nonfiction, Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art. More about this author >
In a tiny Beirut apartment, 63-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son’s desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja’s work life and love life, boundaries be damned.
When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn’t be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.
The novel dances across six decades to tell the story of a singular life and its absurdities—a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness.
Rabih Alameddine’s The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) confronts war, sexual violence, economic collapse, disaster, and pandemic. It’s an artistic exploration of the darkest aspects of existence, and as such, has no business being as funny as it is. Alameddine brilliantly uses the comic form to depict the world as it is, and to remind us that, despite everything, there is joy to be wrung from life.
Rabih Alameddine, Winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction
Rabih Alameddine at the 2025 National Book Awards Finalist Reading
